From L.A. Pop Art by Ed Ruscha and David Hockney to the conceptual art of John Baldessari. From the radical post-minimalism of Bruce Nauman to the most representative experiments of Californian particularism, such as LACMA-Project Art and Technology, which launched an original series of collaborations among artists, scientists and engineers from 1968 to 1971, following the enthusiasm of the lunar mission, or as the exhibition The Negro in American Art, which for the the first time gave voice and dignity to the works of black African-American artists. The works of the feminists Judy Chicago and Miriam Shapiro are important, as well: their art gave voice to women victims of rape.

This important and exciting chapter of American art history, definitely less known that the famous New York art scene, is the protagonist of Pacific Standard Time: Art in LA 1945-1980, an impressive initiative which will take place from next October to April 2012 in more than 60 Californian cultural institutions, among which the Getty Museum, the LACMA, the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Los Angeles Philarmonic and the Watts Towers Arts Center. Six months of exhibitions, performances and retrospectives celebrating - as the title of the event of this unusual "widespread" exhibition explains - the short but influential history of Californian art from the end of World War II to 1980.

"Modern art in California has been developing in its own original way, different if compared to the art scene in New York and the main art centers around the world," explains W. Gaehtgens, director of the Getty Research Institute. "This history is characterized by a little abstract expressionism and a lot of pop art, performing art and interesting revisitations of the modernist architecture of surrealism. Pacific Standard Time wants to do justice to this art scene, to change our approach to it, unfairly considered second-class art for a long time."

"It has never happened before, anywhere in the world, that such a large number of cultural institutions of the same region worked together on a common project", explains Michael Govan, director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. "For years these institutions have silently worked on a huge historical research project. We interviewed artists, filed their archives, thus bringing forgotten materials or even unreleased works to light."

The event will take place in museums and cultural centers, and in the streets, too. In addition to more than 50 exhibitions, a key chapter of the history of Californian art – art performance – will be the protagonist of Performance Art and Public Art Festival, which will be held from January 20th to 29th, 2012. It will present live performances of the most famous acts from the Sixties and Seventies, except for – the organizers explained – At 7:45 p.m. I was shot in the left arm by a friend, which originally took place on November 17th, 1971 at the F Space in Santa Ana (the artist Chris Burden got his arm shot at point blank range).